Harry Brant Has to Do His Homework in Order to Go to the Venice Biennale

Derek Blasberg has already written a book on etiquette, and now he’s come out with a line of stationery for Opening Ceremony. To make it easier for the digital generation to send handwritten notes, the collection consists of prewritten letters in various formats, like thank-you, baby, happy engagement, and all-purpose nondenominational happy holiday, and you just fill in the blanks.

“It’s so rare to get a note that when you actually do it, it leaves the longest impression,” Blasberg told us at a launch tea on Tuesday afternoon. “People never forget. And so if you want to get invited back, send a note.”

The afternoon tea, at the St. Regis in Manhattan, was very Old World (like writing notes by hand), with champagne punch, salmon-cream-cheese-and-cucumber sandwiches, scones with clotted cream, and fruit tarts on silver platters laid out on a linen tablecloth. Lauren Santo Domingo organized the party. “She might get more than a note,” Blasberg said, gazing at the lavish spread. “There’ll be a note attached to something else, but I haven’t thought of it yet. We’re right across the street from Cartier, so maybe she’ll get a note and a red box.”

However, the billionaire’s son is not rude. “I’m a big flower sender,” he said. “White Casa Blanca lilies, the day after—you can’t beat it.” Though still in high school—“I just came from school. I changed in the car,” he told us—Brant says his active social life, which includes things like Fashion Week and the Venice Biennale, has no effect on his schoolwork. “In fact, it actually started pushing me to do better in school, because with my parents, I was only allowed to go out if I get good grades,” he said. Social life is important to Brant. “It really pushes me—like, I have to do well on this, otherwise I can’t go to Derek’s tea. It’s worth all the work.”

Waris Ahluwalia not only sends handwritten notes but also uses old-fashioned pens—the kind you dip into ink. “I write regularly. I’ve always enjoyed it, so it’s not a chore,” he said. The jewelry designer told us he has a large collection of pens, and then dropped another surprising factoid: he’s just obtained his motorcycle license. “I did the whole thing, took classes and everything,” he said, adding that he has no plans to get a bike.

“It was only done for end-of-the-world emergency knowledge. Like if we have complete electrical failure, and you’re running, and with me running [is] a lady, and we’re trying to escape from the floods or whatever’s coming, and there’s a motorcycle sitting there with the keys, what am I going to say? ‘Oh, I don’t know how to ride that?’ And then we keep running and get washed by the flood? So we jump on the bike, and, with the waves crashing behind us—or not waves, necessarily, maybe the buildings falling, or end-of-world apocalyptic kind of stuff,” he explained, laughing. “Happy stuff.”

In that case, does one need to send a thank-you to the motorcycle’s owner?